"Political Parties and European Integration: The Greek Experience"

Moschonas, Andreas. (1995) "Political Parties and European Integration: The Greek Experience". In: UNSPECIFIED, Charleston, South Carolina. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

[From the Introduction]. The Greek accession to the European Union (EU) has been characterized in Greece as the most important political event in the metapolitefsis (post-Junta) period. This event has extensively been analyzed mainly in relation to the economic consequences and the legal textures of European integration. The political consequences of accession still remain a poorly researched and analyzed topic. This paper purports to analyze the Greek Euroelections (1981-1994), with particular though not exlusive emphasis on the prospects for political modernization. In the analysis I shall try to show that the Greek accession to the EU and the consequent participation in the Euroelections tend to establish a rationale conducive to the development of a new political culture characterized by the political legitimization of the multiplicity of expression: to the extent that this happens, the traditional political bipolarity cannot but subside into a more democratic political discourse. Even so, I shall argue that the durability of such a discourse will in the end depend on the prospects for modernization in Greece. In what follows section I tries, to unfold the electoral strength of the major political parties in the elections examined; section II analyzes the main positions of the parties in relation to Greece's participation in the EU; section III tries to shed some light on the effects of this participation on the process of modernization in Greece, and in the final section some concluding remarks are made.

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